"The Crave is here to stay," White Castle's chief marketing officer said in June, standing on a stretch of dirt off Destination Drive with a ceremonial onion sprinkle and a slider in hand. It was a good line for a groundbreaking. It was also, strictly speaking, a promise about the future. Three months later, that dirt is still a job site. The sliders aren't cooking yet. The grand opening is targeted for late fall.
If you live in The Colony and you've been reading the headlines about Grandscape this year, you'd be forgiven for thinking the development already has a Costco and a White Castle. It doesn't. Not yet. What it does have, quietly and without much fanfare, is a stack of new spots you can walk into this weekend. The gap between what's been announced and what's actually open is the real story of Grandscape's 2026, and it's worth knowing which side of that gap you're standing on before you plan a Saturday around something that's still just a rendering.
The Ones Everyone's Waiting On
Costco is the big one. The retailer is building a 155,000-square-foot warehouse with an adjacent gas station at Spring Creek Parkway and Grandscape Boulevard, and Local Profile reported that The Colony City Council approved the project back on September 16, 2025, with construction breaking ground that December. The current target is fall 2026. Worth noting: that's already a revision. Local Profile's coverage points out that a spring or summer debut was floated earlier in the planning phase before the timeline slid to fall. That's not a knock on the project. It's just how these things tend to move once permits, site work, and supply chains get involved.
White Castle is running the same playbook on a smaller scale. The chain broke ground June 2, 2026, on its first-ever Texas location, a 3,430-square-foot standalone with a double drive-thru, canopy, and patio seating. CultureMap Dallas covered the groundbreaking in detail, including the fact that the project is expected to create 70 jobs locally. That number itself tells a small story: earlier press materials had floated a range of 80 to 100 jobs, and the figure settled to 70 by the time shovels were actually in the ground. The opening date followed a similar arc, sliding from an initial "summer 2026" estimate to the "late fall 2026" window that's now the official line.
Here's the part that only makes sense with a little county-wide context. The Colony isn't first in line for a Costco in this corner of North Texas, and it won't be last either. Stores in Prosper and Allen have already opened this year. A Celina location is even further out, with permits showing a construction start in June 2026 and a completion estimate of late November. So if you've been wondering why your friends in Allen have been buying rotisserie chickens in bulk since spring while your own Grandscape location is still fenced off, that's why. The Colony is in the middle of the pack, not behind schedule by local standards, but not the fast mover either.
The Ones You Can Already Walk Into
While the two headline projects work through construction, a handful of smaller, less-hyped openings have already landed and are open right now.
The Rustic moved into the former Lava Cantina space at 5805 Grandscape Blvd. this summer. RestaurantNews.com covered the opening, noting that the Dallas-born restaurant and live music venue kept the stage-forward bones of the old concert hall while bringing in its own wood-grilled menu and a rotation of local Americana acts. If you remember Lava Cantina's rock shows, the building is the same. The music and the food are not.
TOCA Social opened its U.S. flagship at Grandscape in early March. The concept, founded by former U.S. World Cup player Eddie Lewis, blends interactive soccer-target gameplay with a full food and cocktail menu, plus large screens for match viewing. It's the kind of thing that sounds like a gimmick until you're standing in line for a turn.
PopStroke's Surf Lounge debuted March 5, taking over the former Fireside Surf space and turning it into an open-air poolside lounge that extends PopStroke's two 18-hole putting courses into a more social, less golf-focused setting.
Mavericks Dance Hall is also open now, a 21-and-up venue built for dancing and live music that adds another layer to Grandscape's after-dark lineup.
And inside The Homestead, the Gashapon BANDAI Official Shop has quietly become one of the more interesting small additions, a wall of capsule machines dispensing collectibles from Dragon Ball, One Piece, Sanrio, and Demon Slayer, with new items released throughout the year.
None of these made the kind of splash a Costco or a first-in-Texas burger chain generates. But they're the ones you can actually visit tonight, not the ones you're waiting on.
What's on the Calendar This Month
Beyond the storefronts, there's an actual events calendar worth checking before you default to the same Friday routine.
Galaxy Theatres at Grandscape runs a free Cinema Nights series through the fall, and the full schedule is posted by the City of The Colony. Barbie screens September 25, and a costume-contest showing of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is set for October 30. Both are first-come, first-served, no outside food or drink.
If tequila and mezcal are more your speed, Expo Tequila & Mezcal lands at Grandscape on Saturday, September 5, from 4 to 10 p.m., with tastings, live music, and vendor booths.
And if you've got a dog who's still chasing summer, the Bow Wow Luau dog swim event runs in September at the waterpark in town, a last chance for a pool day before the water shuts off for the season.
The Pattern Underneath It
Put the two halves of this together and a pattern shows up that's easy to miss if you're only reading press releases. The projects that get the most coverage, the ones with a ceremonial groundbreaking and a corporate press quote, are consistently the ones whose timelines move. Costco's fall target is already a revision of an earlier summer estimate. White Castle's job count and opening window both shifted between the initial announcement and the actual groundbreaking. Meanwhile, the businesses that opened without a press tour, The Rustic, TOCA Social, PopStroke's lounge, Mavericks, the Gashapon shop, just showed up and started serving people.
That's a useful habit to build if you live near Grandscape and want to plan around it accurately. Treat the big-name construction signs as directional, not calendar-certain. Treat what's already lit up and staffed as the plan for this weekend. The development isn't finished, and it won't be by the time the leaves turn, but it's already further along than the headlines about Costco and White Castle might suggest, just in the storefronts that didn't come with a press release.
If you're weighing what all this growth means for property values or timing a move in or around The Colony, that's a longer conversation, and one Alex Maloney is glad to have whenever you're ready. Let's Connect.
